Number

Contemporary mathematics is an extremely abstract and complex science. But originally, its essential task was to manipulate numbers that represented concrete quantities. There would not have been all subsequent developments without that initial impulse born of the need to harness the power of numbers to solve practical problems. But what are numbers?

A number is essentially an abstraction. It is the concept of a given quantity. It presupposes the cognitive ability to analyze our experience of the world, recognizing similarities and differences of all kinds, from the most evident to the most subtle.

Similarities and differences allow us to catalog experiences and sensations. We learn from an early age to isolate the common traits of what we observe. In this way, we form concepts that transform collections of perceptions into objects of thought: we bite an apple, no longer just a rounded, fragrant thing with a juicy pulp.

Thanks to the capacity to recognize patterns and to catalog them, we soon learn that apples are different from pears, dogs are other from cats, friends are different from enemies and strangers.